We Start Together and Change Again

A Response to Ulla von Brandenburg’s Under Water Ball

Stony had two routes to it. We made our way down the path made by feet, climbing through a gap in the red stone wall. It was only wide enough for us to file down in a single line. It was edged with heavy growth on one side and a steep drop on the other. The view was concealed for the first few yards and then, after turning a corner, there was the sea. Our bare legs hit off the brambles reaching out, and earth gave way as we slowly made our way down. We carried nets, buckets, cooler bags, togs wrapped up in towels, and Thermos flasks. I had my togs on underneath my clothes, to save having to change. At the bottom we climbed down steps carved into the rock, jumped over the sea with the full tide washing up against the wall and onto the cove. We followed the tides. Stony was for high tides.

We all gathered on the sloped concrete plains. My aunts, some uncles, a handful of cousins, my sister, mother, and brother, and my grandmother who we all called Ka. There were the best spots on Stony – where part of the concrete squared off and you could dangle your legs off and look into the rock pool. There were the worst spots – up near the back, rainwater gathered in a puddle, it looked yellow and murky. I didn’t like sitting there, but as one of the younger ones I didn’t get the best spot.

An assemblage all the way to the shore

In our togs we made our way to the sea. We tiptoed down to the stony shore, over the bumpy conglomerate red sandstone. In the sea, shrieks, guttural noises, and yelps rose from us to meet the kittiwakes’ calls. Ka said it was like soup, hot soup, in her coarse voice. I pictured myself in a bowl of mushroom soup, cream of vegetable, or minestrone, but it felt like a glass of water with ice in it.

We swarmed around the sea in groups. Us children went to Goosey, a few strokes out – a big rock in the middle of the sea shaped like a goose with no head. Goosey was easy to climb onto from the tail end and it was a short climb up to jump off the decapitated neck. We did this in several formations; siblings, boys, girls, one at a time. Taking turns to run and jump. At the bottom, the brown seaweed wrapped its long dark length around my legs. For a moment I imagined staying under, but the air in my lungs pulled me back to the surface.

The adults swam further out to Badgers, the next cove up. I always wondered why we chose Stony; after Badgers there was Mens, Ladies, Pegs, and then a nice long strand with sand that we called Lawlors – we could make sand castles there, and not sit on concrete that left imprints and small twigs on our legs.

The adults returned and swam between the moored yachts. Chatting, their voices travelled over the water. We continued to do the rounds of Goosey, climbing up, jumping down, up jump down, up jump down, up. We now had people to shout back to – “muuuuuuuuuuum, watch me” – as we attempted summersaults and dives, mostly ending in bellyflops, a harsh smack to the stomach.

People who live under the water love more and better

Back at the shore, we had lunch. Coffee with milk and sugar from a Thermos lid, with a slight taste of plastic. Soft floury blaas filled with sausages and ketchup. Afterwards, a pastry with rich coffee icing and almost solid cream cut in half.

Ka told us again how she met Pat – a handsome man from Waterford. She was nineteen, slim and good-looking, she told us. She told us how he bought a bus, “He said, I am after buying a bus. A bus, I said, you mean a big bus, and where are you going on the bus? Nowhere he said.” Her voice raised higher as she got to the more dramatic parts, and went low and flat for the parts with dialogue. “I am going to get a site in Dunmore East, to put the bus in the field, the way the kids can have a holiday, he said. I said I don’t like Dunmore East very much – little did I know I’d spend my whole fecking life coming here.” Some of us were hearing it for the first time. “The news broke like lightning, the bus was going to Dunmore East on Good Friday, 1954.”

Ka went on to tell us about the bus’s journey, how it travelled into the sleepy fishing village on the back of a lorry, making its way through winding streets. “It came to the field and got stuck in the mud,” she described the wheels going round and round, “Whurr, whurr, whurr,” rotating her arms, her golden bangles jangling. “The bus heaved out of the mud and went up the track to the cement then stopped. Up went the back of the truck, and the bus slowly slid off and it stayed there for 12 years. Until it was crushed up by a big huge thing you would see on the telly, glass breaking and they dug a huge trench, and they buried it.” The bus was in the foundations of the chalet they built on the same site.

I saw fingerprints on a mirror but it was a broken umbrella

People came and went from Stony throughout the day. We watched for people coming down the path, and we raised a hand to let them know we saw them, waiting until they joined us to say our hellos. I thought I saw someone familiar walking on the road over from the harbour, it couldn’t have been. But then my grandad, from the other side of my family, waved to us from the walkway, then the bottom of the steps. He made his way down and stepped onto Stony. My two worlds collided; I felt like I had seen a teacher at the supermarket, checking dates on cartons of milk.

He had sailed down on his boat, the Banshee, and moored it in the harbour. I knew what a banshee was because Ka would say she heard one screeching before someone had died. The Banshee usually brought us out from the harbour near our home house in Dún Laoghaire. “Boom” he would shout and we would duck to avoid a clatter to the heads from the sail moving around. When the sea was rough we would then tilt from one side of the boat to the other as the direction changed. The adults would hold their beers in one hand and pull ropes through winches with the other. Afterwards, we would have what my mum said were sea legs, it would feel like my body was swaying with the waves for days.

The Banshee was red with a black stripe and lived in the harbour just inside the East Pier in Dún Laoghaire. When we walked the pier, I would look for it and give it a little nod to say hi when I found it in its spot. One day, myself, my brother and our two friends busked on that pier, we dressed up as puppets, made a cross out of wooden slats, and tied some strings to it. I stood up on a high wall and attached the strings to the others who danced and played their tin whistles. The only tune we all knew was a sea shanty, ‘What would you do with a Drunken Sailor’ and we played it on repeat. We left with £100, £25 each.

When Grandad made his way onto Stony, Ka knew him. My aunts and uncles even knew him. But he was my grandad, how did they all know him? Ka and Grandad started talking to each other, the volume of their voices matching. Grandad’s accent was posher, and Ka’s started to slightly intonate the same – a West Brit lilt, like the Queen I always thought. They were quickly swapping stories for jokes. Grandad liked to make up funny poems on the spot. “A Poet and I don’t know it,” he would always say at the end. Ka told him about her latest bestselling romantic novel, telling Grandad about the publicist and how keen he was to get more novels from her.

Slowly the day began to end. Grandad was invited to the veranda in front of Ka’s chalet to see the view of Waterford Harbour, Loftus Hall, Hook Head and Dollar Bay Beach. People left in ones and twos. The waves dragged the tide out. The cove started to change completely. Some of us younger ones stayed to do more swims, walking out as far as Goosey, which just a few hours before was up to its neck in water. We did our oohs and aahs quietly as the rocks jabbed our feet. Goosey looked bigger its full hulk on show, with green seaweed for a skirt. The brown strings were folded down onto the sea bed now. As we pushed out to the sea again we could see the waves move and ripple. Picturing the movement underwater, I was thinking all the energy in the world moves in waves.

Emma Dwyer works in the arts and is a writer. Under Water Ball by Ulla von Brandenburg continues until 25 August